Tip: Getting Warm Water From Your Hose Bib

[DerbyDad03]

Here are a few tips that some of you might find useful...

I have a short piece of garden hose with a spray nozzle that I keep near my utility sink. I use it for rinsing out coolers, washing the Pug and many other tasks. I found out years ago that if I turn on the hot and cold faucets with the hose nozzle closed, the pressure difference between the hot and cold will cause luke warm water to come from any cold water faucet in my house.

This weekend, I'm visiting my parents in New England and my dad asked me to clean his gutters. Of course, it's cold out and there's ice mixed in with the leaves. At my house, I have both a hot and cold hose bib, so getting warm water to melt the ice would be no problem. Alas, Dad only has a cold water bib.

Well, Dad happened to have a spare quick-connect hose fitting, so I screwed it onto his utility sink faucet and turned on the hot and cold faucets. With no hose connected, it acts like a closed nozzle. I then went outside and turned on the hose bib. The water started out cold but less than a minute later it warmed up to a nice, comfortable, ice melting temperature.

I donned a pair of disposal vinyl gloves and proceeded to melt the ice and clean the leaves from his gutters.

So, to recap...

1 - Keep a short length of garden hose near your utility sink...it's great for rinsing things.

2 - Blocking a faucet's output and opening the hot and cold valves can force warm water to a cold water hose bib.

3 - Vinyl gloves keep your hands warm and dry even in cold weather.

I hope that a few of you find these tips useful.

[nestork]

In plumberese, that's called a "cross connection".

A cross connection is where water from the cold water supply piping flows into the hot water supply piping or vice versa. The result is that you end up getting hot or warm water out of the cold water piping or cold or warm water out of the hot water piping.

You can create a cross connection by simply plugging the spout on any faucet and then opening both the hot and cold water cartridges on that faucet to allow flow through the faucet body.

The laundry room faucet is probably the easiest one to create a cross connection with because the laundry room faucet will normally have a hose thread on the end of the spout. So, you can simply screw a hose end cap onto the end of the spout to effectively prevent water coming out the spout.

[Tegger]

nestork wrote in news:nestork.cded592 @diybanter.com:

My daddy did that in 1964. He also plumbed in a hot/cold sink and shower in the garage (first having bribed the builder's guys to put a drain in the floor and keep quiet about it). Us kids had a blast with that shower.

[DerbyDad03]

Thank you for basically repeating what I posted after snipping everything that I posted.

[Stormin Mormon]

Why would a shower in a garage be fun?

My Dad plumbed hot and cold, so us kids could have warm garden hose. That was fun.

[Tegger]

Stormin Mormon wrote in news:jbcmu.43097$ [e-mail]:

Think about it: Summertime. Cold sprinkler outside, warm garage shower inside. You could run between the two. It was fun when we were 8-years-old, anyway.

/That/ was part of the fun, too.

We could even have HOT garden-hose water if we wanted, but that was less fun than you might imagine: The hose got too hot to hold, it got really limp and floppy, and it kinked way too easily. Plus the hot water hurt when it hit. The novelty wore off quickly.

[Stormin Mormon]

Sigh. I'm getting too old, when I can't figure out why a garage shower is fun. Thanks for taking the effort to explain it to me.

[willshak]

Because SWMBO won't let you in the house until you clean up?

[DerbyDad03]

As does aIoe and many other usenet providers. However, I don't think that the restrictions preclude leaving _some_ of the original post so that readers have some context.

It seems that we've gone from people leaving entire posts unsnipped to snipping the entire post when replying (it's not just nestork that does that). As I'm sure you know, it helps if some of the original post is left so we have a frame of reference for the reply.